man in the mirror
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Blog friend and fellow photographer chriskomater wrote about the terror he's been feeling as he is facing the 40-year-old man in the mirror. Relating to his experience, this was my comment to him:
You may come to know the man in the mirror, even if you don't know him as yourself.
I've gotten use to the 47-year-old man in my mirror. He's like a friendly older neighbor that visits me daily. He looks tired to me and isn't aging as well as I hope to myself, but at least he's honest about it. He's kind of world wise. He seems to look into my soul and I have to look away.
Still, it's sometimes hard to leave him in the mornings. I know he'd prefer that I stayed home and talked with him until noon. He sometimes needs me to trim his eyebrows or pluck a whisker from his earlobe and I do it quickly before I rush out for work.
At least, when I finally do leave him there in the apartment and head for the street, I know that I walk with a younger bounce than he does and I'm a little more open and foolishly uncertain about the world than he is. People around me relate to me differently than they would to him, unless, say, the lighting in a restaurant is bad and the young waitress mistakes me for him and calls me "sir." But I quickly rectify her misunderstanding with a laugh and a little banter that he couldn't possibly keep up with if he were there.
I know one day he'll move in with me and I'll have to follow his schedule and his rules. But for now it suffices for me to look him in the eye each morning and ask him if there's anything I need to know before I go out into the world for the day.
3 Comments:
I keep seeing this 38-year old bitch in my mirror who's got crows' feet and sun spots and grey hairs peeking through her dye job and I don't know where the hell she came from.
OK! OK! Officially, as of right now, I will NOT make any more comments about being old until I reach AT LEAST 35.
I see the light........My husband's been telling me for 3 years that the comments are unnecessary as when he turns 40 in Nomvember this year, he will have a wife who is still more than a full year away from being out of her 20's.
Jay, beautifully written. Ever thought of putting those writing skills alongside some of your fantastic photos in book form?
Thanks J... you're right. It's how we act, how we feel, not the numbers we see on our drivers license. (Thankfully, for me, they don't include weight in those set of numbers... how depressing would the DMV be then?)
It's all a matter of perception, Ladies! I know you both, like I, have at least one person in your life that sees you as something other than the way you see yourself. I remember how my mother made the same comments about herself as she aged and we all thought, "She looks good to me. I'll never think like that!" This is one of those human experiences that are pretty common. And the "I never's" from my younger years keep coming back to haunt me.
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